Benchmarking as a tool for enhancing an insurance company ’ s business commercial process

: A corporation can enhance its business process through a variety of approaches and methodologies. One of them is benchmarking, which businesses are increasingly using as a tool to raise the quality of their goods, services, or procedures. The article’s goal is to demonstrate how benchmarking may be used to enhance an insurance company’s business operations. The companies Fabrega Soler, S.C. Asesores de Seguros, and Galan Rodriguez Servisegur, S.L., selected as partner companies representing Generali Seguros in Spain, are the work ’s subject . The findings of the conducted benchmarking reveal significant differences between the two analysed companies, allowing for the development of a strategy to enhance the company Fabrega’s commercial process.


Introduction
When we first learn about insurance, we should be aware that exclusive insurance agents are a significant professional group in Spain.In fact, the General Directorate of Insurance and Pension Funds estimated that there were 71.784 exclusive insurance agents in Spain in 2018, giving us an idea of the sector's potential and its level of competition.More than 5.000 agents, including those from Fàbrega Soler, S.C., are currently a part of Generali's network of mediators.All of these agents fight to be recognized as highly as possible by the corporation and to be the network's greatest and most significant agent.The fact is that each company has its own business management and must seek out ways to differentiate itself from and outperform its capable competitors.To do this, it is necessary to concentrate on the commercial process, which is regarded as the core of its professional activity.In some ways, how the company manages the commercial process determines whether or not this succeeds, and it is a significant competitive advantage.
The problem is centered on how to increase the level of compliance with the standards set by Generali that enable commercial success and differentiation from the competition.In order to uncover the best practices of the top company's commercial process and, therefore, the insurance mediators who work for Fàbrega Soler, S.C., the management of the company's commercial process is analysed in detail for the first time through benchmarking to have additional resources, which will help their business perform better commercially and maybe advance its position within the Generali insurance group.
The article briefly describes the development and application of the benchmarking approach, and for this, it is necessary to: • describe and evaluate the business practices used by insurance businesses.
• spot the best practices in the industry, • use a benchmarking technique tailored to the business object of work to enhance the business operations of Fabrega Soler, S.C. -a subject of investigation, • identify the variable of the business process that will be compared, • examine the benchmarking findings to identify any pertinent differences between the company under investigation and the industry leader • create an action plan to enhance Fàbrega Soler, S.C.'s essential procedures and gain more success and recognition within GENERALI Seguros (Spain).
You can read the entire procedure described in the article until the conclusion, which establishes if this methodology provides high-quality data and serves as a beneficial tool for improving Fabrega Soler S.C.'s commercial process.

Concept of benchmarking
According to Macdonald and Tanner (1998), benchmarking can give us realistic evaluations and objectives for the company's processes while illuminating the practices that underlie its performance.Benchmarking also enables us to know the company's current situation, whether it is good, bad, or mediocre compared to other renowned companies.As a matter of fact, according to these authors, benchmarking is "the capacity to recognise, comprehend, and apply exceptional methods and processes of other organisations anywhere in the globe in order to contribute to the improvement of the performance of the company itself" (Macdonald & Tanner, 1998. p. 10).
Continuing with the explanation of the concept, it is interesting to cite the definition made by other authors, as well as Marciniak (2017), which defines the concept as follows: The essence of benchmarking is based on being aware of one's own weaknesses and knowing that, surely, there is an institution that is better than ours.If we find them, we can compare our activities with theirs and adjust their solutions to the conditions in which we operate (p.175).
We might assume that questioning or thinking about what businesses do can be a deciding factor for improvement since a business that is unaware of its condition can never change and will lag behind its rivals.
Therefore, we must never confuse the concept of benchmarking with copying, or with making a traditional competitive analysis, or pseudo-benchmarking (exchange of experiences in congresses or discussion forums)...In short, benchmarking is a method used to evaluate and improve the results of organisations through the comparison of the practices carried out by leading organisations.

Benchmarking in insurance companies
Currently, the scope of benchmarking as a tool within any organisation has no limit; in fact according to Macdonald and Tanner (1998), there are many reasons for benchmarking since this helps to focus on all the business imperatives involved in customer satisfaction, process performance, and business results.In that sense, it is interesting to know that any process or practice that can be defined can be studied with benchmarking.
As a result, insurance firms are an excellent choice for a benchmarking object because they are typically very large organisations with a substantial organisational structure and numerous distinct divisions, making it possible to study a wide range of processes and procedures.Through examples of benchmarking activities conducted in the insurance sector, Table 1 illustrates the potential reach of benchmarking.Most of the projects listed in the previous table, except for one, are academic, which indicates that the content is frequently constrained by informational constraints, i.e., that conducting research is frequently a challenging task if you are not a member of that particular organisation.However, it is interesting to note that all of the projects examine various administrative or more commercial processes or areas of the company.

Methodology
The research carried out has a descriptive approach and is applied to a case study.In addition, a qualitative research method called benchmarking is used, which involves a comparison between the commercial process of a company with another leading company, in order to detect good practices and develop an action plan.
It should be mentioned that the interview, which has been used to gather data, was conducted online in this case because of the pandemic's circumstances.For the administrators or managers of the organisations under study in the case, this interview is a social approach that has been established.
Finally, note that the case study provides a thorough and qualitative analysis of the company's commercial operations.
The research carried out is divided into three different phases, which can be seen in the following Figure 1: A concise explanation of the issue under investigation was prepared in the first phase, which also defined the primary criteria or weaknesses of Fàbrega Soler, S.C.In addition to this research phase, a number of goals that the research is supposed to attain and several issues that the case study is considered to address were identified.
After defining the issue under investigation, we moved on to the second phase, during which all insurance company-related documents and bibliographic resources were analysed, the commercial process was developed, benchmarking was done, and the standards and quality indicators of the commercial process were researched.
Finally, a benchmarking technique built on Marciniak's (2017) approach was created and used, enabling us to go forward with the case study and create an action plan (see Figure 2).

Proposed benchmarking methodology
The proposed benchmarking methodology is divided into four distinct phases, each containing a minimum of two subphases: Phase Three Based on Marciniak's methodological, we built and used our own benchmarking approach (2017).

Phase Two
We must analyse all the documents and bibliographic materials required to thoroughly understand the research issue after we have decided what we want to investigatePhase One and what we hope to accomplish with the study.We must also study the formalised criteria and indicators.

Phase One
The primary criteria or flaws that the company identifies are specified, together with a concise explanation of the issue to be researched and a number of research goals.Additionally, the company-which was formerly known as Vitalicio and only merged with Estrella in that year-has grown exponentially and strengthened its position within the Generali Group.However, this merger did not bring about any notable changes; it simply allowed the company to establish itself and solidify its position in the Spanish insurance and finance market.
The full name of F.S, S.C. is "Fàbrega Soler Assessors d'Assegurances," which is significantly longer than the firm name we had previously said.Nevertheless, when the mediators of F.S, S.C. answer the phone, they address the client using the full name enclosed in quotation quotes.
With only one commercial office and three employees (two full-time and one part-time) FS, S.C. is Generali's sole commercial office in the region that corresponds to Catalonia's territory and the Girona Branch.
In terms of recognition or accomplishments, they have been included in Club Generali since 2011, the most prominent component of the Generali Group's commercial network.They have also twice been ranked among the top 10 and once among the top 20.Finally, from 2005 to the present with the exception of one year, has received compensation in kind in the form of travel, as all these accomplishments are challenging to achieve, taking into account the number of agents participating in the Club Generali network of mediators.They have also participated frequently in the Life Club within the group itself since 2011, which means greater compensation and economic incentives (more than 5,000).
The insurance agency Galán Rodriguez Servisegur, S.L. (hence referred to as G.R.S, S.L.) was registered with Generali in 1999.From that moment until today, this company has become a benchmark within the group of agents.Well, its achievements and recognition have been exponential until arriving in 2019 as first classified in the ranking in the Generali Club; it was also one of the finalist agencies for the Generali best agency in the world award because taking into account that Generali is present in more than 50 countries, it is a very remarkable achievement.Also, for practically all its history, it has been classified in the Vida club, and the Generali club and has received the remuneration in kind in the form of a trip.
As for G.R.S, S.L.only has a single commercial office located in Granollers, since it corresponds to the territory of Catalonia and the Barcelona Branchand the company is formed by three full-time workers.

The benchmarking of the case
In order to check if F.S, S.C. can collect good practices, such as some advice to improve the commercial process of the selected leader, benchmarking has been applied from March to April 2020.This benchmarking has been carried out according to the methodology proposed in Figure 1 and described below.

Phase 1: Approach to the benchmarking project
In this phase, benchmarking objectives, variables, items, and benchmarking indicators were defined.The methods and sources of data collection were chosen.In addition, the instruments for collecting the information were designed.
According to Hernández et al. ( 2014) "a variable is a property that can fluctuate and whose variation is capable of being measured or observed" (p.105).
The variables chosen for the comparative evaluation, in accordance with the needs of benchmarking the commercial processes of the insurance companies, were: recruitment, loyalty, and retention.These variables correspond to the different phases of the commercial system carried out in the insurance companies, encompassing the entire commercial process.
To evaluate each variable, a set of essential items was chosen to execute the comparative evaluation between the agency under study and the benchmark (leading company).The following is the Table of Operationalization of the Variables (Table 2).

Source: author´s own elaboration
Three protocols were developed to collect the necessary information that served as an observation and benchmarking sheet.These protocols were as follows: • A catchment benchmarking protocol, called Protocol C.
• A loyalty benchmarking protocol, called Protocol F.
• A retention benchmarking protocol, called Protocol R.
These protocols have been used in the third phase of the methodology to be able to collect and analyze data, and to proceed with the comparison.
It is important to mention that the results that have been obtained from the protocols have been developed using the Linkert scale.For each indicator, a value between 1 and 4 was chosen, assessing the degree of compliance of the indicator, that is, 4, meaning that it fully complied with the indicator, and 1 meaning that it did not meet anything.In addition, to assess the indicator, a comment has been inserted justifying the assessment.

Phase 2: Search for best practices
In the second phase of the methodology, the benchmark company or leading company with which the comparison would be made was identified and selected.The following describes the procedure for selecting the leading company: First, four selection criteria for the leading company were developed: 1. Seniority: time that the company has been associated with Generali Seguros.The longer the time, the greater the compliance.
2. Ranking: The last year will be valued, the position in the ranking of the Club Generali.
Being the lower number, the one that has the greatest compliance.This is the most remarkable criterion.
3. Human Resources: the number of employees that each organization has is valued since the one that will have greater compliance in this criterion will be the one that adjusts to the number of 3 employees, which are those that Fàbrega Soler, S.C. has.
4. Highlights: several criteria that may influence the final decision will be noted, if the score is adjusted a lot.
Also, it was taken into account that a specific case of an insurance agency was investigated, with which a non-probabilistic sample was chosen for the purpose of developing and applying the proposed benchmarking methodology.
Next, I proceeded to analyze 5 exclusive insurance agencies of Generali Seguros that have a current agency contract.According to the results obtained, the company of Galán Rodriguez Servisegur, S.L. has been chosen since it obtains the highest score in the selection criterion that has more influence on the success of the commercial process, since it also obtains a good score with regard to the other criteria.In the last step of this phase, a letter was sent to the selected lead agency, requesting its authorization to carry out the benchmarking and explaining what it would consist of.
Table 3 presents the application of selection criteria to the chosen companies, although the names of the companies have been replaced by copyright, and only the official name of the selected company has been included.Analyzing Table 3, it can be clearly seen that Gala Rodríguez Servisegur, S.L. is the company that obtained the best score in the most important criterion, which is the Ranking column since the following year it was classified as first of Club Generali, the most prestigious club for Generali.In addition, it has been chosen because it has, like the company under study, the same human resources and the same number of offices, with which we intuit that the comparison will be tighter but more useful if this company is selected.

Phase 3: Data collection and analysis
This phase consisted of an internal analysis of the two agencies selected for the study and a subsequent comparison of the data.Previously, the leader's business process was identified to expand the visibility of possible improvements.This information was collected by filling in the C, F, and R benchmarking protocols and using the data collection sources described above in phase 1.
In Table 4, we can see how the item "commercial recruitment strategy" corresponding to protocol C, which serves as an example, was filled.There is a commercial strategy, although it is not explicitly documented on a sheet.
But there are some supporting documents.
There is a commercial strategy, although it is not explicitly documented on a sheet.
The strategy favors the balance of the client portfolio that Generali wants.
The strategy favors the balance of the client portfolio that Generali wants.
1.3 Implementation of the strategy Sometimes they do not use supporting documents, and the recruitment process is lost in effectiveness.
In the absence of a document of its own, the implementation cannot be evaluated optimally.

Source: author´s own elaboration
The protocols made it possible to measure the quality of the commercial process of the two insurance agencies investigated and, subsequently, to determine the situation of these agencies, to proceed by identifying the gaps of each variable studied and their causes.
These gaps are included below, as well as the process of identifying them.It is worth mentioning that to identify the gaps, a table has been prepared for each variable analyzed (see Table 5, 6 and 7).To interpret the data and identify the gaps properly, it must be taken into account that for the company Fàbrega Soler, S.C. the lightest color was chosen in the filling of the indicators, and for the company Galán Rodríguez Servisegur, S.L. the darkest colour was chosen, also if they coincided in the Likert scale, that is, If the two companies had been evaluated with the same number, the fill colour corresponded to black.

• Uptake Gap
The benchmarking of the capture variable and its comparative analysis (see Table 5) shows us many interesting results.First of all, we see that there are a lot of black spots, which means that in many indicators, the two companies have the same degree of compliance.On the other hand, the most significant gaps is in the commercial strategy and the selection of customers.For example, the implementation gap in the commercial strategy is due to the limitation in the exploration and collection of the data of the leading company, since as not enough information was available, a 1 has been determined on the Linkert scale, which has caused these gaps.The benchmarking of the loyalty variable and its comparative analysis share many similarities with the capture gap in terms of the level of indicator compliance.First, we have the item of commercial strategy, whose indicators do not reflect that although companies do not have a documented strategy, their loyalty results are quite good, although the leading company is slightly better, as a result of the implementation gap.This is a result of the gap in the subsequent items; for example, there is a slight gap in the proactivity indicator of loyalty commercial actions.However, one of the most significant gaps in Table 6 is found in the item climate of trust, particularly in the indicators of accessibility and interactions.These indicators are closely related to the proactivity indicator since we can determine that the main gap that has been detected in the F benchmarking protocol is that the leading company is more proactive and generates greater interactions with which the climate of trust with the client is superior, as well as its results in the composition of the portfolio, Well, they have more loyal customers (platinum).Also, an interesting gap has been detected where the benchmark company has obtained a lower degree of compliance; as for the tools, it is known with certainty that the company Fàbrega Soler, S.C. has developed its own loyalty tool for the most crucial customers.Another identified gap, which is considered important, is the indicator of organization of functions in the item of competencies since the leading company is excellent, and this contributes to the effectiveness of the entire business process.Finally, in terms of value-added, they are practically the same since there are no significant gaps, although in risk management, the leading company is superior in large part due to proactivity and interactions.Finally, the benchmarking of the retention variable and its comparative analysis (see Table 7), where many black fillings are appreciated, which means that there are no significant gaps and both companies meet all indicators with the same degree of compliance.But if we go deeper, we can extract that the leading company is more effective in part because it has a degree of compliance more in risk prevention since employees spend more time on this issue, generating more monthly interactions.On the other hand, it should be noted that the degree of compliance with the claims management of the leading company is higher since they have a very efficient and effective action protocol, which allows for retaining more customers at the end of the year.

Phase 4: Action
This phase has been developed to adjust the existing gaps between the company of Fàbrega Soler, S.C, and the leading company.For this reason, an improvement plan has been developed with concrete actions that will allow F.S, S.C. to implement the best practices in its commercial process.
The improvement plan has been developed based on the specific objectives considered essential for achieving the strategic objectives, establishing the indicators that allow Fàbrega Soler, S.C. to control the fulfillment of the goals and analyze the progress of implementation of improvement.In addition, the plan includes a description of the necessary actions that the company must implement to achieve the strategic objectives.
This action plan aims to be a support tool in making strategic and operational decisions that affect the business process.
Below, in Table 8, the proposed improvement plan is presented.The organisation will be able to create a new control and management system for all the operations involved in the commercial process thanks to the business process improvement plan that has been created.However, the plan should be set up in accordance with the employees of the organisation.

Conclusions
In the present research, the problematic situation was initially raised, the objectives of the research as some research questions that we intend to answer below.
It can determine that the benchmarking methodology has made it possible to answer most of the research questions and meet the research objectives.
In the first place, it was necessary to know in detail how the company under study worked and, ultimately what its commercial process was and how they proceeded, such as their weaknesses and strengths.Then, practically all the information was found through the interview, which has been the fundamental data collection instrument of the project.
We can roughly extract that the company Fàbrega Soler, S.C., follows all the recommendations established by the company of Generali Seguros Spain so that its working method and the execution of all the processes integrated within the commercial process itself are carried out correctly guided by the premises of Generali.Although, the commercial success of this company is not only achieved by following the guidelines, they must meet the commercial objectives.At this point, it is where the gaps arise between some companies and others because, depending on the fulfillment of the objectives, each company acquires achievements and recognitions that distinguish them within the group.For example, compliance with the parameters in new production can be a greater incentive, such as contributing to the qualifying position within the Club Generali ranking.
Thus, we could say that it was intended to know what were the gaps or differences at a practical level that allowed the leading company of the same group to meet the objectives in such an efficient way, and for this the benchmarking methodology was implemented.The question is: Have there been notable gaps?
We understand that the gaps found after the comparative analysis of the protocols do not offer us enough information to put together a detailed action plan, but this does not mean that the benchmarking study has not been useful.In fact it can be determined that both in the capture, as in the loyalty and retention, the investigated company does not have a strategy adequately described.In some way, this harms you in the implementation and monitoring of commercial actions.However, the leading company does not have a documented strategy or is unknown, so this gap may not be valid.Anyway, it has been included as an objective in the action plan to improve the commercial strategy and implementation of commercial actions in the three variables, independently.
In addition to the above, from the identified gaps and with the information from the interviews, it can be determined subjectively and observing the information collected that the leading company stands out about the company of Fàbrega Soler, S.C due in large part because its work team is very clear about the processes and their functions, thus deriving tasks that do not correspond to them, which allows them to optimize time and improve their own performance.All this contributes to the fulfillment of business objectives.
Thus, the main difference between the leading company and the company under study is the organization of the different activities included in the commercial process according to the employees, which allows it to successfully meet the requirement of operational excellence and new production that has a weakness Fàbrega Soler, S.C.This is because in the different stages that the client passes, since the client is acquired until the sale and subsequent followup is made, employees specialize in specific actions, however, in the company under study, in many cases it happens, that the same employee implements all the activities of the commercial process, Thus wasting time and greatly reducing their capacity for commercial performance, because the key is to derive tasks and organize the work team so that there is at least one exclusive employee for the conversion stage, that is, where the sale is made.In summary, it was identified that the leading company is more efficient since it has 10% more platinum customers and ultimately meets the commercial objectives to a greater degree.
Finally, one can say that benchmarking has shown to be a very effective method for locating the company Fàbrega Soler, S.C.'s weak points.The approach employed to do benchmarking at this company helped identify some gaps and develop an action plan that should be put into practice and monitored over time to see whether the study was truly beneficial.
Last but not least, it has been challenging to undertake an analysis of two businesses that are fundamentally the same, operate for the same organisation, and are a part of the same group.
It would be interesting to carry out a much more extensive study to pinpoint specific variations in the operational procedures of the insurance firms of the same organisation.

Figure 1 :
Figure 1: Phases of the investigation Source: author´s own elaboration

Figure 2 :
Figure 2: Methodology for benchmarking the quality of the proposed insurance agency's business process Source: author´s own elaboration based on Marciniak, 2015

Table 1 .
Examples of benchmarking projects in the insurance sector

Table 2 .
Operationalization of variables

Table 3 .
Selection criteria applied to Generali's exclusive insurance agencies

Table 4 .
Example of a comparative catchment evaluation protocol (commercial recruitment strategy item) filled in

Table 8 .
Proposal of the commercial process improvement plan for Fàbrega Soler, S.C.
Source: author´s own elaboration